


make sure you kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face

by aceofcorvids (clockworkcorvids)



Category: Alpha Protocol
Genre: Action, Boxing & Fisticuffs, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Fights, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, Kidnapping, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Canon Compliant, Rivals to Lovers, Sparring, Timeline What Timeline, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, What a shame, and it's exactly the tropey shit youd expect, and top secret super spy shenanigans, hatefucking but make it platonic, i dropped some, no beta we die like men, non-graphic description of corpses, relies on some cut content, theyre both kinda assholes tbh, war crimes but not committed during armed conflict so they dont count, which is just a long winded way of saying, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24987832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/aceofcorvids
Summary: Sean gets kidnapped. This is a mistake for everyone involved.
Relationships: Michael Thorton & Yancy Westridge, Sean Darcy & Michael Thorton, Sean Darcy/Michael Thorton
Comments: 6
Kudos: 3





	make sure you kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rigil_Kentauris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigil_Kentauris/gifts).



> this is for rigil! thanks for singlehandedly dragging me into this hellscape of a fandom B)  
> really, i do appreciate it ~~even though you really fucking played me with some of those plot twists~~
> 
> as noted in the tags, this relies on some cut content! also, i don't know what the fresh hell is going on with the timeline since this is supposed to take place in saudi arabia but i referenced some things that imply other missions have already happened 
> 
> also! that line about the geneva conventions, along with the premise of this in the first place, is from some of ap's delightful cut content, compiled by rigil, because at this point im pretty sure rigil comprises like 80% of the alpha protocol fandom. [here's](https://alpha-protocol-archives.tumblr.com/post/171845973547/mission-s05b01-aka-alternatejizan-transcript) a link.
> 
> title is from [twin size mattress](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWJUk65EnQM) by the front bottoms, cause these idiots have more than enough fucked-uppedness between them to fill an entire tfb album  
> i pretty much exclusively listened to talon of the hawk while writing most of this and it shows

In the beginning...Michael doesn’t remember how the rest of the line goes. All he knows is that it’s all kinds of sappy shit, pardon his French, about love at first sight. Except, that’s absolutely and most definitely not what he experienced.

Nope. Nada. Double-layered motherfucking zilch and all that. 

In the beginning, Michael didn’t give two shits - and isn’t apathy the true inverse of love? - and then, after Mina informed him what the source of the noise on the training course he’d only just finished was, he really fucking hated Agent Sean Darcy. Because, you know, when it comes down to it, hate can be a lot more effort than apathy, but it’s also far more entertaining, and Mike is only human.

Oh, and that’s not even the  _ real _ fun part. No,  _ that _ comes from the fact that despite it all, despite the fact that Darcy has every reason both professional and personal to be unable to stand Mike, despite the fact that Mike introduced himself to Darcy by kicking his ass in a bet, despite all the stupid shit Mike says without thinking about it because sometimes he just lets his mouth run to break the monotony of professionalism, Darcy  _ likes _ him. 

So, in short, it would be impossible for him to feel apathetic about that walking disaster of a human being, both because of himself and because said disaster might as well be flopping down in front of Mike like Jack from  _ Titanic _ , except instead of saying “Draw me like one of your French girls” he’s saying “Fight me like one of your rivals”.

Which is what they are. Rivals. Or something. 

Except  _ rivals _ is a little less harsh than  _ enemies _ , but it fits. Mike thinks he should hate Darcy. He really does. He still  _ does  _ hate Darcy, he tells himself, even as he knows it’s decreasingly true. Even compared to his other handlers.  _ Especially  _ compared to his other handlers. Westridge is aloof, neutral, the two of them get along on a purely professional level. Mina is out of his league - romantically, as a friend, professionally, literally whatever. She’s on an entirely different level than him. She exists somewhere above basically everyone else, and occasionally descends (accompanied by glowing light and a heavenly choir of angels, of course, but only in spirit) to bless-slash-curse mere mortals with her presence. 

And Sean - they work well together in the field, well enough that Mike can get past the man’s wild, borderline manic, and frankly infuriating personality. And he  _ does _ , over time - his hatred starts to fade away to become just...not apathy, because there’s  _ something _ there in the space where there used to be an absence, a nothing - which is good, he supposes, because it’s better to have a neutral relationship with a handler than to actively have beef with them. At some point, he picks up on the slowly eroding nature of his hatred, and decides to actively work towards having that neutral relationship. Instead of enemies to friends, or hate to something vaguely positive, or whatever TVTropes.org calls it, his relationship with Darcy (specifically his side of it, because the way Darcy feels about him is definitely very different) has gone from apathy to hatred to a feeling that can only be described as the physical embodiment of the word  _ meh _ . 

It might be contentment, but Michael isn’t an Alpha Protocol agent for his impressive psychoanalytical skills, nor is he particularly interested in figuring out the source and nature of whatever that emotion really is when he can just write it off as nothing in particular.

Writing off the nuances of his emotions (yeah, he has those, and he’s not entrenched enough in toxic masculinity to completely deny that) becomes more complicated, though, when he starts feeling. Oh. What does he call this? 

He starts feeling  _ more _ . More  _ strongly _ . Like his opinion of Sean is on a slider, and it’s been hovering safely in the middle but is now slipping towards one end just a little, and the  _ strength _ of said opinion is also on a slider, which someone has jacked all the way up to the most intense setting. 

So. Yeah. That happens, and it’s clearly towards Sean, and he tells himself at first that it has to be his good ol’ friend vitriol back at it again, because if not that it could only be apathy, and apathy doesn’t check out unless he’s looking at a lack of feelings. (Apparently, trying to force himself to feel  _ anything, _ up to and including feeling nothing at all, is unsuccessful at best and it downright backfires most of the time anyways.)

Well, Agent Darcy certainly likes him, in some twisted and counter-intuitive way that Mike wouldn’t be able to make sense of if he tried (which he doesn’t, nope, he definitely doesn’t lie awake staring at ceiling tiles that are blurry without his glasses, and he  _ absolutely  _ doesn’t think about the fact that he’s never even really been trying to make the man think positively of him, just trying to make sure he doesn’t die in the field because Sean gets too pissed and decides his ass isn’t worth saving, but it happened anyways). It’s not like he cares much about what Sean thinks of him, beyond when it’s immediately relevant to his career and/or life expectancy, but he still feels something akin to pride when the other man expresses positivity that’s vaguely directed at him.

So that’s their new status quo. And it sticks, for a while. Neutrality. Sean being manic and rude and, in his own weird way, friendly. Michael being his usual assholeish self, but the specific brand of it that is professional and/or cooperative.

And then it all comes unhinged and crashes down, and that goes something like Michael tangling his legs in his sheets as he kicks at them, because he’s been startled awake by the door to his bedroom in the safehouse slamming open, and his heart is racing, but it’s just Westridge, but  _ what the hell does he want at two in the morning?  _ It can’t be good.

He barely processes Westridge’s voice, just the words coming out of the man’s mouth, sinking into the air around him and saturating the air he desperately pulls into his lungs. (He must have been having a nightmare, but nothing will stick with him but the feeling, that lurking sense of latent dread.)

“Agent Darcy’s been kidnapped.”

There’s no room for possibilities. No  _ he’s gone and he  _ might _ have been kidnapped _ . No  _ we don’t know what happened _ . There’s only that classic Westridge certainty that he is saying exactly what happened. Michael doesn’t exactly know what happened, but he gets the feeling he’s about to, and anyways, he’s been asleep for a whole three hours. Plenty could have happened in that time.

Of course Michael goes and says something stupid, then, frozen halfway out of the bed, because he’s half asleep despite the adrenaline beginning to pump through his veins and he’s basically already accepted the title of  _ de facto asshole _ , so he has that excuse lined up.

“Well, that sucks for him, I guess.”

Westridge takes a very long moment to respond, in which Michael becomes significantly more awake and starts to regret having the ability to speak without thinking first.

“This is no laughing matter, Agent Thorton. He sent an encoded distress signal to the main computer in the safehouse, and I was awake to see it.”

Oh. Ouch. He broke out the  _ Agent Thorton _ right to Michael’s face. This really  _ is _ serious shit. But...there’s something nagging at the back of Michael’s mind. How the hell would Darcy even get himself kidnapped in the first place? 

“He’s not supposed to leave the safehouse.”

“He’s technically not supposed to be in Saudi Arabia in the first place.” Yancy’s gaze follows Michael as he fumbles for his glasses and PDA.

“And yet,” Michael says, glasses firmly (albeit somewhat crookedly) on his face and PDA in one hand. Staring down - or, more precisely,  _ being _ stared down by Westridge, Michael is very aware of the fact that he’s naked save for boxers and that stupid QR code shirt he doesn’t know why he held onto.

“I’m going to be your handler for this. Informally, of course. The rest of Alpha Protocol doesn’t find out about this.”

Once again, there’s no room for  _ if. _ Only certainty. No caveats, no backup plan, because nobody else  _ will _ find out. They can’t afford that, and on the off chance something goes really wrong, which it  _ won’t _ , but if it  _ does _ , they’ll just bullshit their way out of it.

“Got it,” Michael says. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t know where to start. At that, Westridge turns away, and the door closes behind him. 

“Five minutes!” Westridge calls through the door, and Michael yawns before grimacing. 

“Got it,” he mutters again, to himself this time. 

The security camera footage from outside the safehouse - because Sean’s kidnappers might have been prepared, but Alpha Protocol makes it its business to always be  _ more _ prepared- is both surprisingly comprehensive and infuriatingly lacking. On one hand, Michael is surprised Sean didn’t bother to disable the cameras altogether, or even to stay in the blind spots of the cameras, but then again, he probably knew what he was doing. He probably knew there was a risk this would happen, and he didn’t want to disappear without a trace. That’s - well - it’s not what  _ Michael _ would have done, but Michael also hasn’t been indirectly blackmailed into being on lockdown for the bulk of his career, and he’s not. You know.  _ Sean _ . He’s not like that. 

( _ Not like  _ what _ , Michael?  _ he thinks.  _ Not the kind of person you… _ He doesn’t finish that thought.)

If he concentrates so hard he moves past focus, slips into a trancelike state, almost like his brain is on autopilot, he can almost pretend this is a normal mission - Westridge talking into his ear, sand in places it shouldn’t be, a Black Hawk waiting to swoop in if needed. Agent Darcy is not his handler this time, and therefore he isn’t involved this time. He’s not a factor. This is just a run-of-the-mill hostage recovery mission. Michael isn’t emotionally attached to the person whose life might be in his hands. 

Wait. 

What is he _thinking_ , that that isn’t his default? He _isn’t_ emotionally attached to Sean. Nope. Not at all. Definitely not. He won’t be sad if Sean dies - okay, backtrack, that makes him sound like an unredeemable asshole, and he may be an _asshole_ , but he doesn’t think he needs redemption at this point in his life. He won’t be personally sad if Sean dies, not the way he would if, say, a beloved friend died, but he’ll be generally sad, because, you know, it’s better for the job if he stays a little detached - he _knows_ Westridge said he could use a close relationship to his advantage, but still - but he’s not a cold hard piece of shit. 

He’s like a...room-temperature, kinda squishy piece of shit. And he really doesn’t like that visual, especially not when he’s creeping along through the desert in the dead of night and he can’t see what he’s about to step on.

Sean’s distress signal isn’t much to go by, just a set of coordinates and a rudimentary layout of the detention center around him - he must have hacked, well...something. He probably had a few options, not that Michael is particularly interested in the  _ how _ right now unless it’s directly relevant to his mission. It’s enough to tell Michael where to go, so he accepts it, and he continues to fume quietly about the fact that, not only does he have no line of communication whatsoever to Sean, his radio signal is shit enough that even Yancy keeps cutting out. It’s hard to stay professional when he doesn’t know what the fuck his handler is trying to say, and his default method of coping with confusion is to crack jokes which, evidently, aren’t funny to Westridge.

Michael spends a good chunk of the hour just sort of sitting behind one or another rocky outcrop in between creeping around - he’s got plenty of options - sand whistling in the wind around him and stinging his skin where it hits. The sky, or what he can see of it, is dotted with stars, and he thinks if his glasses weren’t scuffed beyond belief he might be able to see even more than the Adirondacks offer. Not that he has the time. Not that he can devote the energy. 

Westridge’s signal picks up again as he gets closer to the coordinates Darcy sent, which are hopefully also his actual coordinates. 

“Detention camp is up ahead,” he reports. “The sandstorm might get worse, but as it is right now it should give you good cover.”

“Got it,” Michael says.

Turns out, getting in is the easy part. The sand does, in fact, give him good cover, although it also means that he nearly walks into a few patrolling guards because none of them can see more than five feet in front of them. There are barbed wire fences and all that fun stuff, but to a man with Mike’s skill set, that’s child’s play (at least, that’s what he tells himself when he needs a self-confidence boost). And, of course, while it comes with the job description, he doesn’t particularly want to go on a murder spree if it’s not strictly necessary, so he takes the cover from the sand as an opportunity to silently knock out the guards and hide their unconscious bodies. 

The detention facility itself is musty, low to the ground, and looks like it was abandoned for some amount of time. Upon climbing in through a window, narrowly avoiding triggering an alarm, and even more narrowly avoiding furiously sneezing at all the dust that he’s sent up off the floor and into the air, he finds that the cells are all empty. Some look like they’ve been recently occupied, others not so much.

Now that he’s here, he tries to radio Westridge, but the combined sandstorm and walls are evidently not receptive to his signal. No radio, so he’ll have to rely on his powers of observation. He’s on his own - well, not as much as Sean, but that’s not his problem right now. 

Unfortunately, Sean’s coordinates must have been hurriedly calculated, maybe even approximated from a map, so Michael can’t track him to any location more specific than the vicinity of this building itself, but somehow he expects to hear frantic screaming. Or something. Frantic screaming doesn’t really seem to be Darcy’s whole shtick, given that he’s, you know, a top secret super spy. 

It gets even more entertaining (to use the term loosely and cynically - it’s mostly just unsettling in a vague kind of way, like an itch you can’t scratch) when Michael finds the stairs. There’s a basement, which is even more musty and - lo and behold! - unlike the ground floor, noticeably damp. If he had no radio signal before, he must have, like, a  _ negative  _ signal now. Of course, he’s taken more than enough physics to know that’s not how radio waves work, but metaphors don’t have to follow the rules of the universe. There’s just that much extra dirt and concrete in between him and Westridge.

Now, as he creeps down the stairs, taking out a guard at the top and two more at the bottom - the first he’s encountered since entering the building - he starts to hear noises. Not screaming, but definitely noises of pain. Probably Darcy, but he can’t really recognize the voice from here. Oh, wait, no, there is screaming, or at least something that sounds distinctly  _ loud _ and _ angry _ , but that’s coming from a voice he  _ definitely  _ doesn’t recognize. 

So. 

There is at least one person down there with Sean. Said person is presumably torturing him in some capacity. 

That doesn’t bode well for what little professionalism Michael was hoping to retain. No matter how much he tries to convince himself that he doesn’t care just a little bit about Agent Darcy, that’s just a blatant lie at this point, and besides, he’d do the same for any of the other Alpha Protocol agents he knows, never mind that he can count them on one hand and still have at least one finger left over.

Sliding past the stairs, he finds a dark and, frankly, very ominous hallway, from which multiple doors offshoot. He picks the locks on a few, as quietly as he can, and finds that they’re just storage rooms for the most part. No harm in lifting some extra ammo, though - it’s not like Alpha Protocol has an infinite budget, especially given its unique position in the American soup of alphabet agencies and the fact that a good portion of said budget goes straight to the safehouses.

One room, though, one room contains what is very obviously a human body, slumped over in a corner as if it has been shoved aside for later, a sack over its head. Michael rushes to the person’s - the corpse’s - side, and confirms what he already knows with a quick brush of fingertips to a throat. It’s nobody he recognizes, thank fuck, and he can’t help the surge of what may or may not be an unprofessional sort of relief when he lifts the sack to find that the cold, pallid body before him doesn’t belong to Sean Darcy.

Although, of course, there’s always the possibility that Sean could end up like this, and the distant muffled sounds of a struggle are no longer particularly distant or muffled, so he leaves the room and crosses the hall to the final room. 

The door’s shut. 

Locked. 

Reinforced. 

No guards here, though, so he checks the magazines on both his guns, and he rolls out any cramps in his neck, and he clenches his teeth as he picks the lock. The only reason his hands don’t shake is because he’s long since trained that tendency out of his system. He wants to be anxious, he does, but that makes it personal, and he’s not making this any more personal than it already is. 

(Which it  _ isn’t _ , what is he saying? If it’s personal, it’s because he made it so, and he definitely didn’t. Nope. Totally not at all.)

The door opens, and the scene inside looks like the prequel to a red room. The walls are grimy and splattered with half-heartedly cleaned stains of blood and who knows what else. He doesn’t exactly want to dwell on that, so in the approximately two seconds he takes to sweep the room with his gaze, he instead focuses on noticing what looks like an operating table, to which one Sean Darcy is strapped, and the rickety metal table next to it, which is covered in an assortment of pointy metal objects Michael suddenly wishes he couldn’t identify on sight. Two guards whip around when they see him enter, and he takes them out with tranq darts to the neck, aim precise and - if not for his particular choice of weapon - deadly. The man standing over the table, yelling in Sean’s face and shaking a bloodied fist, reacts while Michael is busy firing his gun, and he’s fast enough to put up a fight against Michael. 

Knuckles connect with Mike’s tactical vest, and he inhales sharply as he focuses on offense over defense. His gun flies out of his hands, landing in the dirt. They trade punches, neither hitting the other, for a few tense seconds, and then the man swings with a little too much zeal and Michael catches his wrist in one hand, twists it back, snaps his arm with a  _ crunch _ . 

He grunts loudly, still kicks at Michael, and Michael falls back, taking both of them painfully to the ground. His knee hurts enough that he thinks he’s going to need medical attention after this, but he files that thought away for later. He has more urgent things to deal with, like scrambling to his feet and backing up and dodging his opponent’s next swing - being relatively short has its advantages in a fight.

He doesn’t spare a glance at Sean, or even bother to process if the man is making any noise, because he’s entirely focused on the fight. And he gets a good hit in, after taking a few himself, a knife hand to the throat followed by a boot to the skull. He’s breathing hard, harder than he should be after just one tussle, but this has taken a lot out of him, and it’s also the middle of the night. 

Michael takes a moment to dust off and holster his tranq gun, and then he picks up a scalpel off the table and regards it with distaste. 

“You’d better not be planning to use that on me,” Sean spits, but the effect of his vitriol is ruined by how downright weak he sounds. 

“Oh, come on, I don’t hate you  _ that _ much,” Michael says, dropping the scalpel as he decides that his own multitool would be better equipped to do away with the combination of twist ties and rope that bind Sean to the operating table. 

Sean grimaces as he stands, and Mike doesn’t miss the way he sways a little. 

“Heard you needed a ride,” he says, to which Sean responds with a look of contempt. The effect is rather ruined by the fact that he appears to either be coughing up blood or to just have a busted lip. Possibly both. (For the sake of not having to airlift him to a hospital, and definitely not out of the goodness of his heart, no, definitely not that, Mike hopes it’s just a busted lip.)

“Well,” Sean grimaces, almost baring his teeth, and yep, not all of that blood is from his lip, “I tried to ask these nice gentlemen for directions. You know they’ve never heard of the Geneva Conventions?”

_ Oh. Oh shit.  _

“The Geneva Conventions only apply during times of armed conflict between nations,” Michael says, because  _ yeah _ , that’s a real dickish thing to point out, but at this point he’ll take literally any leg up he can get against Darcy in their little game of banter, and besides, he can’t resist the temptation to make a good point that’ll make the other man flustered. Also, it’s hard to form coherent thoughts when Sean is sort of bleeding out in front of him.

To his surprise, Sean doesn’t snap at him in response. His face doesn’t redden any more than it already has. He makes none of the usual gestures Michael expects. Instead, he just turns his head to the side and spits in the dust. 

“Yeah, well they sure haven’t heard of this neat little concept called  _ human rights _ , either, because I’m fairly certain they broke a few of my ribs.”

Well, that would explain the whole  _ coughing up blood _ thing.

Michael doesn’t have the heart, at this point, to continue joking, so he just steps forward and hoists Sean up on one of his shoulders, despite the other man’s - albeit weak - protests.

“Come on,” he says, “we’re getting out of here.”

Sean grumbles something that sounds a lot like  _ I don’t need to be carried _ under his breath, but he goes along with it nonetheless.

Michael Thorton is a lot of things, but unintelligent is not one of them, so he makes sure to collect evidence before he hotwires a car to take him and a barely-conscious Sean back to the safehouse. Westridge is furious, because of course he is, but he goes ahead and administers emergency first aid anyways, which may or may not entail calling in a ‘friend’. Michael doesn’t know, because Michael is forcibly relegated to research duty while this takes place. Thankfully, it looks like this was a one-off thing, just an action of opportunity - out-of-place white guy with no tan to speak of, in slacks and a dress shirt, walking around in the desert in the middle of the night, he’s probably got money, some kind of intel worth money, or both. On the other hand, Michael thinks it’s only a matter of time until Darcy’s dad finds out and unleashes all hell, unless they cover their asses real well. 

Which. Well. He’s good at that. It seems like Westridge is too, and it’s in Sean’s best interest to keep this little incident under wraps, so they’re probably fine on that front. However, secrecy doesn’t mean Michael can’t grill Sean about it, so after a long sleep and an extra-strength Tylenol, he does just that. 

Sean is sitting in front of the fountain when Michael finds him. He’s on a cushion, cross-legged, and his eyes are closed. Meditating. Michael, having meditated himself, is respectful enough not to poke him or otherwise interrupt, so he just sits down a few feet away, understanding as soon as his ass makes contact with the hot cement why the cushion is a good idea. 

Whatever. Something, something, thermodynamics. He’s wearing pants. He’ll live.

After a while, Sean shifts a little, and his eyelids flutter. Michael watches, pretending he isn’t marginally interested (hey, it’s not like anybody can see him, so it might as well not have happened in the first place), as Darcy slowly flexes his wrists, his shoulders, his ankles, stretching his back and then his arms, rolling his neck out. 

And then he opens his eyes and looks directly at Michael.

“You’re not very smooth, Thorton,” he says, looking for all the world like he’s never been less impressed. “I heard you sit down.”

Michael blinks, takes in a very deep breath through his nose, and struggles to keep his expression neutral. 

“Just thought I would check in on you, see how close to death you are after that incident,” he says, which isn’t entirely untrue. Sean either doesn’t pick up on the omissions or chooses to ignore them. 

“Unfortunately for your peace of mind, I don’t believe I’m going to be kicking the bucket anytime soon unless I get kidnapped again. You certainly took your sweet time showing up.”

He sounds completely unbothered, and Mike isn’t quite sure what to make of that, so he just keeps talking.

“You know, I’m surprised you didn’t try to break out on your own anyway.”

“I considered it, given how long you were taking, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to be breaking twist ties _ and _ rope with my bare hands. Those bastards didn’t look away from me for more than two seconds at a time.”

Michael snorts. “Well, shit, sorry I can’t control the weather.”

“Oh, fuck off, you know you’re glad I’m still in one piece.” There it is again: that stupid,  _ teasing  _ smirk. Mike isn’t sure what would be worse, if Sean actually hates him - which, given the photos he’s taken to carting between safehouses, is probably not the case - or if Sean’s love language is just being a snarky pain in the ass - in which case, he must be head over heels for Mike, and that’s. Well. It’s a thought, for sure. 

He settles for rolling his eyes instead of saying something he might regret. 

“And besides, I may not leave the compound much, but I still practice.”

“Trying to beat my score, I presume?”

“What I’m trying to say, Mikey, is that I was equipped to take out everyone you see lying unconscious on the floor around you, and I could…” he hesitates. Trying not to commit, the fucker, Michael can see it in his eyes, but he’s stubborn even more than he is self-protective.

“I have plenty of time to practice my hand-to-hand combat when you’re off gallivanting about in every obscure corner of the world you can think of. I could beat your ass in a fight if it came down to it.”

Michael blinks. Stands up, in one jerky move. Mentally, he sees a flashing vision of the countless people he’s taken out with his bare hands, lethally and nonlethally, enemies and allies alike. For all his technical and combat training, his hands are his best weapon, because he’ll always have them. Unless they get amputated somehow, in which case he’ll either die from the acute loss of blood or become a cyborg, the latter of which would make him even more of a badass.

“Could you, though?”

Sean looks  _ angry.  _ Downright fuming as he, too, stands, towering a good few inches over Michael. He looks like he’s either about to lean down and kiss Michael, or take a knife hand to his throat. Maybe both. That feels like a lengthy therapy session waiting to happen. He looks like all that pent-up manic energy is boiling over, about to explode. Michael has a vague thought about angry Irish redheads, but he chooses not to voice it in the interest of not being insensitive. (And mostly in the interest of not adding to the already no doubt expansive list of reasons Sean has to punch his teeth out, because he’s finding that he’d really rather not have that happen.)

“Why not find out?” Sean suggests.

Oh.

_ Oh. _

There go Michael’s not-so-carefully laid out plans.

“I’d rather not,” he says, trying to salvage what’s left of the situation before it devolves into anything that could result in more emergency medical treatment - for  _ either  _ of them. 

Sean throws up his hands in a joking mime of a boxing stance, and swings at Michael in slow motion. He clearly intends no harm, he’s just messing around, so Michael lets him do it.

“We could spar,” Sean suggests, and Michael raises an eyebrow at him.

“How much morphine did Westridge give you?” 

“Enough. I feel great.”

Sean repeats the miming movement, and he catches Sean’s wrist. In his mind, he’s replaying the way he broke that man’s wrist less than a full day ago, the man who was holding Sean captive. He could do the same now, so easily. ( _ What the hell? _ he thinks,  _ Why would I do that? _ )

He catches Sean’s other wrist, too, holds both hands steady in between them. 

He doesn’t break either wrist. 

“The hell are you doing?” Sean asks.

Sean stares down at him. His face is flushed so red Michael doesn’t know how much of it is just the Irish genetics and how much is anything else. 

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Sure you don’t want a fight, Mikey?”

It’d be so easy to agree, to ruin everything - though it’s admittedly not much - that they’ve built up, but he’s not going to do that. Whatever is compelling Sean to act this way, it can’t be coming from a healthy place. 

“I’d love to spar. But not while you have, what, two broken ribs?”

“Three,” Sean answers, not missing a beat. 

“I’ll take a rain check, then,” Michael says, half not expecting Sean to actually take him seriously, and he drops the other man’s hands. 

He feels like there’s something left unfinished as he walks away.

A month later, back at HQ, Saudi Arabia is nothing more than a series of memories, paperwork, and the occasional sand found in places it shouldn’t be. Sean’s ribs are mostly healed, which evidently didn’t take long given that Westridge has every reason not to let him do anything that could get him hurt, and Michael is back in the swing of things. Normal missions, that don’t involve other Alpha Protocol agents going and getting themselves kidnapped and then being ridiculously enigmatic and - if he’s willing to do a little mental gymnastics - almost charming.

He runs all the training courses again, beats Darcy’s score, gets Parker to regard his improvement with just the slightest bit of positivity, has more than a few laughs with Mina, and doesn’t think about how strange his conversation with Sean had been. 

And then Darcy himself finds Michael in one of the training rooms, where he’s boxing with a bright red punching bag, and Michael hears him come in but doesn’t say anything until he’s done with this round. He scratches an itch under his hand wraps, takes a chug from his water bottle, and turns to face Sean, acutely aware of the fact that he’s covered in sweat, wearing nothing but ratty gym shorts and a promotional T-shirt he doesn’t remember the origin of, and that Sean is dressed in...well, unexpected attire. His hair is slicked back like usual, as if he might get called into a diplomatic meeting any second, but he’s wearing shorts with a faded CIA logo on them and a plain white T-shirt. Not his usual choice of work clothes.

“You’re not very smooth, Darcy,” he says, exercising his powers of memory and (at least, in his opinion) humor. “I heard you come in.”

“I’m glad you remember our conversation at the Saudi Arabia safehouse, then, because that was what I came to talk about.”

Michael sets down the water bottle and rolls his shoulders. 

“Go ahead,” he says, after a moment of slightly - it’s not  _ that _ bad, but it’s just a little noticeable - awkward silence. 

“You told me to take a rain check on the sparring when I didn’t have three broken ribs. So here I am.”

“Damn,” Michael says, “you took that seriously?”

“Look, we’ve already gone back and forth with the high scores on the training course enough times. We might as well find something more entertaining to stake bets on.”

Oh. Oh  _ shit _ . He’s  _ serious _ . 

Michael blinks, takes in a deep breath, tries not to gag at the distinct smell of sweat in the room. Sean certainly isn’t  _ wrong _ . 

“So you mean I’ve finally beat you for good, and you want to get a leg up on me without embarrassing yourself in front of Mina?”

“Now, we both know a good spy never gives up their secrets, Mikey,” Sean says. 

“Yeah, yeah, and we both know you stole that quote from some movie, so let’s fucking go. You know where the hand wraps are.”

Sean, grinning, is already going for the hand wraps, and Michael feels a surge of something that may or may not be warmth in his chest. He tells himself that that’s stupid, because most emotions manifest as physical warmth, so that doesn’t mean anything if he doesn’t let it, but he’s also smiling a little. Despite himself, he thinks. 

For once, they both play by the rules, boxing like normal, sane people, and it’s almost like when Michael trains with Mina. Almost like there’s a sense of friendly companionship between them. Which, well, there might be, because it’s been long since established that Sean expresses admiration in the same way an alien with little to no knowledge of human society might.

“So,” Michael says, in between punches, “you said you wanted to talk. This - ” he breaks off to dodge, block a strike, fire another back at Sean, “ - isn’t really talking.”

For a guy who more or less has a desk job, Sean is staying on his feet. Then again, Michael recalls hearing somewhere that boxing is some kind of Irish bonding activity, so he could be trained in it. 

“I suppose  _ talking  _ wasn’t the most accurate way to put it,” Sean admits, barely blocking a strike that would have otherwise hit him and deflecting it back at Michael. Michael stumbles a little, and feints to the left, making Sean’s next hit miss him entirely. 

“You have to admit this is more fun anyways,” he adds, and Michael huffs in response. 

“Sure, I guess so.”

He stumbles again - damn, Sean really  _ is _ trying to get a leg up on him in their little betting game - and realizes, startling, that Sean’s backed him into a corner while distracting him with talk. Of course, were this an actual adversary, Michael would never have let such a thing happen, but he’d let his guard down. Sean doesn’t have an excessive amount of height on him, but it’s enough that he feels sufficiently trapped in said corner, and Sean stops swinging, realizing that he’s let up. 

“I win that one, yeah?” he says, breathing hard, and oh  _ no _ , he’s kind of hot like this. Not just physically hot, which he  _ is _ , Michael can feel the heat radiating off his body at this proximity, but, like...Michael can most definitely not call his feelings towards Sean anything remotely resembling neutral anymore, and he is  _ very  _ aware of it right now..

“Sure, I’ll give it to you,” Michael says as he slips past Sean and goes for his water bottle again, just to see how Sean will react, and he relishes the other man’s double take. 

“Really?” Sean’s crossing the room, too, still facing him.

_ Whoops _ , Michael thinks. Being proud that Sean liked him turned into grudgingly liking him in return turned into really wanting to kiss that smirk off his face. Which is, well, probably a one-way trip to undoing every bit of progress both professional and personal that they’ve made in the time they’ve known each other.

“Sure,” he says, to avoid going a suspicious amount of time without speaking. “Anything else you wanted to add to the betting pool while we’re here?”

Sean shrugs. “Nah. You?”

“Well, I’ve gotta say - ” he lowers his voice, knowing there are eyes and ears everywhere here “ - you’d better not go pulling a stunt like what you did in Saudi Arabia ever again.”

“What, like you care? I was under the impression you were just doing it for duty.”

“You spend a lot of time thinking about whether I care about you?” It comes out like a joke, almost, but it’s half choked, Michael finding himself unable to hide his genuine surprise. (Curiosity. Perhaps even a little bit of hope.)

Sean Darcy likes to ramble, and when he gets started, it’s hard to get him to stop. But, for once, he doesn’t use his words to respond. Michael starts to pitch backwards, stumbling just a little, and for a split second his brain thinks they’re sparring again, but that’s not what’s happening at all.

Sean kisses like he’s trying to piss someone off. Like he’s trying to provoke someone, quite possibly the someone whose chest and lips are flush to his own right now. Like he’s made it this far, but he still expects to get punched in the mouth any second now, so why not make sure it’ll happen - you know, just so he can get that extra certainty that it couldn’t have gone any other way?

And Michael  _ is _ pissed, although not for the exact reason that he thinks Sean expects him to be. He’s not the only one who’s made it this far, and Michael isn’t about to give up, even as the two of them move as a reluctant unit, stumbling together until his shoulders roughly hit the nearest wall,  _ especially  _ as Sean kisses even harder, fiercer, pushing for Michael to snap and shove him away. 

To his surprise, it’s Sean who breaks away, pulls back, puts space between them, and it’s like ripping off a Band-Aid, except without the reprieval that comes after - once it’s gone, the pain just worsens.

“What the - ” he’s breathless “ - what the hell are you doing, Mikey? Just - push me away already. Don’t do this. Don’t lie to me. Fucking - punch me or something.”

His words aren’t surprising, not knowing what Michael had already known. It’s the way he says it that stops Michael in his tracks. Choppy, pained, almost broken. A hand comes up to Michael’s chest, splays out, no doubt to push  _ him _ away, and he catches Sean’s wrist.

“You’re lying to yourself if you think I want to push you away. I used to. But not anymore. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to, now.”

“You - ” Sean cuts himself off, evidently unable to find the words. A downright linguistic genius and yet he’s suddenly unable to speak his native language. He doesn’t try to drop Michael’s hand, though, which must be a good - or at least not-terrible - sign. “You care.”

“When you’re not being a pain in the ass, sure. Sure I do.”

“I - I’m sorry - I shouldn’t have - ”

Michael shrugs, still holding Sean’s wrist in his hand. It’d be so easy to shift a little, to properly hold his hand instead, and he offers that up, sees if Sean accepts the gesture. 

He does. 

“I would have appreciated a little warning,” Michael admits, “but I’m fine with it. More than fine, really.”

He picks up his free hand from where it’s pressed against the wall to steady him, and cups Sean’s jaw, and in the moment of surprise where Sean falters and catches his breath, but leans into it nonetheless, Michael reinitiates the kiss - on  _ his _ terms. Gently, because they may dance around each other in that aggressive way they have of doing things, but Michael isn’t going to carry this, whatever it is, on, not with any illusions that he really wants to hurt Sean. 

Okay, so it took a little while and more than a little stress to get here, but this isn’t bad at all. This has got to beat apathy by a long run, and if Michael gets to do this more often, he might even stop complaining about Darcy’s abhorrent lack of Photoshop skills.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/aceofcorvids)
> 
> also, my laptop battery kicked the bucket, so until the new one comes in i will be furiously writing college applications and fic on my school chromebook. this means two things:  
> 1) everything is going to take me much longer  
> 2) my school gets to see fun google searches such as "when do the geneva conventions apply", "broken ribs coughing blood?", and (because i wanted to make _sure_ ) "hatefucking definition"
> 
> thanks for reading! <3


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